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Ancient Egyptians made jewellery from meteorites

22 August 2013

Research led by UCL Qatar’s Director,
Professor Thilo Rehren, in collaboration with UCL Institute of Archaeology and
European colleagues has shown that ancient Egyptian iron beads at the UCL
Petrie Museum were hammered from pieces of meteorites.

The objects, which trace their origins
to outer space rather than from iron ore, also pre-date the emergence of iron
smelting by two millennia and were originally strung into a necklace together
with other exotic minerals such as gold and gemstones, revealing the high value
of this exotic material in ancient times.

Excavated in 1911, in a pre-dynastic
cemetery near the village of el-Gerzeh in Lower Egypt, the beads were already
completely corroded when they were discovered. As a result, the team used x-ray
methods to determine whether the beads were actually meteoric iron, and not
magnetite, which can often be mistaken to be corroded iron due to similar
properties.

“The really exciting outcome of this research
is that we were for the first time able to demonstrate conclusively that there
are typical trace elements such as cobalt and germanium present in these beads,
at levels that only occur in meteoritic iron.” said Professor Rehren.

“We are also excited to be able to see
the internal structure of the beads, revealing how they were rolled and
hammered into form. This is very different technology from the usual stone bead
drilling, and shows quite an advanced understanding of how the metal smiths
worked this rather difficult material.” he added.

The study, published today in the Journal
of Archaeological Science, confirms that already in the fourth millennium
BC metalworkers had mastered the smithing of meteoritic iron, an iron-nickel
alloy much harder and more brittle than the more commonly worked copper.